Bantry, Co Cork, Today-Sat July 2nd, 1850-788789

Bantry’s West Cork Chamber Music Festival swings into action on Friday, with 90 performers over its nine days, including four string quartets – Diotima (pictured), Pacifica, RTÉ Vanbrugh and Auryn – over the first weekend alone.

The festival runs to 44 events, and includes what may well be the first performances in Ireland in modern times of the music of the 19th-century French composer Georges Onslow. One of his string quartets appears in the company of Schubert, Ligeti and Ravel.

A string quintet is sandwiched between Deirdre Gribbin’s Merrow Song for string quartet and Dvorák’s Piano Quintet. And his Nonet comes in a morning concert after Vivaldi and Handel. Australia’s Brett Dean features as both composer and performer (he’s a former member of the Berlin Philharmonic’s viola section). A morning strand will feature mainly baroque music. And Dublin’s Kaleidoscope series takes its club atmosphere out of the capital for a late-night session at the Maritime Hotel.

You can also have your fill of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt and Tchaikovsky – Boris, not Piotr. Bantry likes the unexpected.